Opinion & Commentary
Outback Stores is not the solution
Remote Indigenous stores are more than just your corner shop. For those of us living in cities and towns it is hard to imagine having only one store to shop at but this is the problem facing tens of thousands of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders living in remote communities across Australia.
Isolated by impassable roads during the wet season and poor transport options, many remote Indigenous communities are dependent on their local community store for all their food needs. If these stores do not stock a range of healthy food, residents are unlikely to have fresh fruit and vegetables as part of their regular diet.
Years ago, during the era of the Outback Missions, many remote communities grew their own fruit and vegetables but for various reasons including the debilitating effects of welfare dependency and communal ownership of land, very few remote communities have their own gardens today.
Occasionally, locals may go hunting and fishing and collect ‘bush tucker,’ but 90–95 % of the dietary intake of Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders consists of packaged food and drink. Diets heavy in refined sugars and saturated fats have contributed to the high prevalence of lifestyle diseases such as obesity, type 2 diabetes, and cardiovascular disease among remote Indigenous Australians.
The Federal Government has introduced a number of initiatives to promote good nutrition and healthy eating practices such as the ‘Tomorrow People’ campaign. The problem with these sorts of health promotion programs is they tend to imply that people make poor food choices because they do not know any better. This is not the case. The Government has failed to grasp the real reasons why people eat unhealthily.
Most healthy eating campaigns have not taken into account the fact that there few refrigerators and stoves in Indigenous communities. Many residents rely on pre–cooked or takeaway food (hot chips and pies) and food that can be heated easily because they do not have the facilities to store or cook food at home.
The Government has also failed to see the irony in promoting healthy food when remote communities have limited access to fresh produce that is also often overpriced and of poor quality.
When I visited East Arnhem Land last year, I was appalled at the price and condition of the vegetables for sale at a local community store. The carrots were black and the apples were soft and bruised. But the store had not discounted the fruit and vegetables that had started to go off and the apples cost $1 each.
In an attempt to improve the availability and affordability of fresh fruit and vegetables in remote communities, the Howard government established a company called Outback Stores in 2006. This is a good temporary solution to the problems that plague remote stores but should not be seen as a satisfactory long– term solution.
Remote stores will always hold a valuable role in communities, not only in being the main source of food but also in providing employment opportunities for local residents. But rather than running stores for Indigenous communities, Outback Stores should be empowering residents to run the stores themselves.
